54 SUPER CHEVY SEPTEMBER^2019Ultimately, Mom convinced Dad that
he’d be OK, and Chevelle number one
showed up in his life. The ’67 Chevelle
SS had been pulled from a junkyard by a
local enthusiast and restored to pristine
condition. “I popped the hood the first
Saturday I had it and was tinkering with
it,” he recalls. “My grandfather, who was
a mechanic, came over and he said, ‘Your
secondaries on the Quadrajet are not
opening up and you are just running on
the primaries.’ We played with it for a
bit and freed up the secondaries and I
took it out for a test drive. I turned the
corner off of my street, jumped on it, and
turned it sideways and I said to myself,
‘Oh my gosh, this thing is a monster.’”
Miller owned it for approximately
two-and-a-half weeks before wrecking
it, as 17-year-olds are prone to do when
handed powerful cars. Without getting
too deep into the story, he got onto it
going around a curve and a drunk driver
was coming from the other direction
and turned in front of him. After hitting
a second car behind the first and going
into a ditch, that was the end of his first
Chevelle.
“It was devastating to me, too.
It was such a beautiful car. I bought
it back from the insurance company,
took all the good stuff off of it, bought
another ’67 Chevelle SS, and transferredeverything to the new car, which was
Madeira Maroon,” he says.
That car remained in his possession
for several years until he signed up to
join the Navy and shipped out in January- He tossed the keys to his little
brother, said “have fun for a while,” and
went off to ride the waves of life. A year
later, little brother also shipped out for
Navy duty and David asked his mom to
sell the car off. There’s no telling where
it is today.
The sands of time continued through
the hourglass, as life’s journey brought
a wife and a family, along with a budget
that was stressed enough at the time
supporting his loved ones that there was
no disposable cash left over for car-guy
activities. Once the kids were up and out
of the house, his fleet business was in a
successful position, and there was a place
to store a vehicle like this, he jumped full-
bore back into the opportunity to own
another muscle car.
Three more ’67 Chevelles entered
his orbit. The first was a Marina Blue
hardtop example (which has since left
his possession); then an SS convert-
ible that has been restored to original,
assembly-line condition; and, finally, this
car, which was originally a vinyl-topped
car out of Chicago with the ZZ502
crate engine in it.
Once David got the car home and
discovered it needed some work, he had
a decision to make. Should he just patch
it together and make a fun driver out
of it or go all out and treat himself to
the car he’s always wanted?
“I decided to take it down and do
it right. The big thing was having the
discretionary cash and having a place to
store it. I’ve got a 7,500 sq-ft outbuilding,
and when I built it, I designed it with
six garage doors along the side to put
the cars in it,” he says.
Along with the fleet business, he also
has a 100-acre farm, 100 acres of wood-
lands, and another 70 acres of pasture.
The maintenance of this massive property
requires several tractors and other pieces
of farm equipment. And with 100 acres
of soybeans (or corn, depending on the
year) to maintain, along with the healthy
business—and 11 grandchildren—you
might imagine his free time is quite
limited.
After taking the ZZ502-powered
Chevelle apart and blasting the body to
see what he was working with, he eventu-
ally realized that he just didn’t have the
time to finish off the project. Although
he had previous experience with swapping
engines and rebuilding manual transmis-
sions, he understood a full-on restomod
was outside his realm of expertise.RELIVING MEMORIES